In fact, Donald Trump first met with Michael Flynn in August of 2015, just two months after Trump announced he’d be running for president. But you don’t have to take my word for it. We know Trump met with Flynn in August of 2015 because Flynn told us.

From the February 27, 2017 issue of the New Yorker:

In August, 2015, Flynn went to New York to meet Trump for the first time. They were scheduled to talk for thirty minutes; the conversation lasted ninety. Flynn was deeply impressed. “I knew he was going to be the President of the United States,” he told me.

So let’s get this timeline straight.

August 2014: Flynn is ousted by Obama at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

June 2015: Trump announces his plan to run for president.

August 2015: Trump meets with Flynn for an hour and a half at Trump Tower.

December 2015: Flynn is paid by the Russian government to speak at a gala in Moscow and is seated at the same table as Vladimir Putin.

February 2016: Flynn starts acting as an informal policy advisor to the Trump campaign.

Got all that? Trump said in the interview last night that he didn’t think he knew Flynn in 2015. But he definitely did. Not only that, but by early 2016, Trump was being advised by Flynn on foreign policy matters during the campaign.

….

You really have to watch the entire interview from last night, embedded above. It’s so bizarre, not least because Trump explained that he was going to fire FBI Director James Comey regardless of any recommendation made by the Justice Department. ……

Another couple details: The media in the U.S. hadn’t been told the ambassador was meeting with Trump. We know it because of the Russian photography. Also, when some U.S. journalists were let into a room when they thought Trump was meeting with Lavrov, the person sitting in the room with Trump was Kissinger.

(CNN) Donald Trump promised a White House like no other when he pulled the biggest upset in presidential history to become the 44th man to hold the job. Man has he delivered.

From his Twitter feed to his dinner guests (Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and Sarah Palin — all in one night!), the Trump White House has looked, and run, like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

But, even by Trump’s standards, the last 24 hours has been surreal. In fact, the last day feels more like a reality TV show — storyline twists and turns, surprise guest appearances — than it does anything resembling a semi-normal day in political Washington.

Let’s start with the present moment and then rewind.

The White House press pool was called into the Oval Office just before noon eastern time for what they expected to be a photo op between Trump and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov since the two men were scheduled to huddle earlier today.

But it wasn’t Lavrov they found sitting with the president! It was Henry Kissinger, best known for his role as Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon!

There’s another guy, one originally from Russia but (I think) a naturalized U.S. citizen, whom I have mentioned before here on your site as well as at least one another place (someone else’s blog). I shared my transcription of what this man said right before a debate during campaign season to defend Trump’s decision (or the campaign’s decision) to bring a certain naturalized Kenyan as Trump’s debate guest.https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/19/13329784/obama-brother-trump-debate

You may remember the Trump operative had said Malik thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction and that the people of America also think the country is headed in the wrong direction… and that’s all, he indicated, anyone needed to know. This half-brother endorser of Trump was presented as ostensibly authoritative/credible; the whole thing is more a trolling operation.

That Russian (u.s. citizen) Trump operative wasn’t seen much for a few months but was back in the news to respond when someone said it was embarrassing that Trump let Russian media into the recent meeting with the Russians but didn’t let in the United States press.